Of course, you'll be queuing up, won't you? I'm talking to all you Gormley fans out there - you already voted to select this work from a shortlist of possible projects for the plinth. So obviously you'll be pleading to become part of it, and then you'll be flocking to Trafalgar Square to see it. Even before it happens, this is a titanic success. Just as Gormley's exhibition at the Hayward Gallery was. He is the best-loved artist of Britain's cultured classes ... but I remember him when he was irrelevant.

When I think of Antony Gormley, I think of a book I used to have as a student. It was called State of the Art and it accompanied a Channel 4 television series about contemporary art. This book found its way into the house, and sometimes I would leaf through it. I would stare coldly at the chapter about Gormley.

I couldn't have been less interested. At the time, I was more enthused about the contemporary novel than contemporary art; so was everyone. This was the era when Martin Amis ruled. When I read London Fields, it was like a punch in the face from the modern world - so real, so immediate, so darkly exhilarating. But I didn't get any of that thrill when I saw Gormley's art. Nor did I get it from my encounters in my early 20s with other leading British artists of the day such as Anish Kapoor, whose work I remember finding ... you know, interesting ... but basically irrelevant and distant and tame.

Then something happened: I saw a shark in a tank. Here was the art of my generation. And whatever I have felt, whatever I have said about the art of Damien Hirst and his brothers and sisters, it always will be the art of my generation. Something in it will always stir me just as 60s veterans freeze when they hear the opening chords of Gimme Shelter. I simply cannot feel that about Gormley. He's as remote to me as Joshua Reynolds.

I've written some harsh things about Antony Gormley. I once called him, in the Guardian, a wanker. It probably looked like I was coming from some Brian Sewell realm of cultural elitism. The truth is far simpler. Gormley belongs to a generation of artists who were already well-known when I was a student and whose work could not make me see why art mattered. It doesn't matter how many public commissions he gets - to me he will always be a boring old fart.

Now that Antony Gormley's One & Other artwork in Trafalgar Square has drawn to a close, London's fourth plinth project continues to be a huge success with the public. Take a look at the works that have been displayed on the plinth since the first (Mark Wallinger's Ecce Homo) in 1999

Today, the mayor of London unveiled the winners of the next fourth plinth commission for London's Trafalgar Square. See the winning designs by Antony Gormley and Yinka Shonibare, plus the rest of the shortlisted designs by Jeremy Deller, Tracey Emin, Anish Kapoor and Bob & Roberta Smith